Great question, Ty.
I personally think "no, the etymology doesn't matter so much as usage and context. Unlessssss...." and here's where it gets sticky. I am both an academician AND a practitioner, which means that lots of what gets ladled out as pop-pagan isn't acceptible to my level of academic integrity. I can understand the usage and the context of words like Dryhten, but can't participate in it fully because of my background. And, since I think I'm representative of a fairly large sub-population of Witches, things like etymology become necessary if one is working toward credibility in the spiritual sphere.
Tom
On Mon, 12 Nov 2007, Ty Falk wrote:
> So then as a symbolic anthropologist I would ask, unless you are
> specifically working on a linguistic project, does the etymology
> necessarily matter so much as the usage and context? There seems to be
> some support that the term could be hobbled together, regardless to
> the gramatical accuracy, sort of like a pagan Bush-ism. So then would
> it's meaning within it's usage context then become of greater
> importance? After all, does the chemical makeup of a rock matter so
> much as the fact that someone is using it to represent the naughty
> bits of Shiva?
>
>
>
> On Nov 12, 2007 8:02 PM, Felicia <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>> Ty,
>> We could just as easily conjecture that the words are properly formed
>> as Tan af drych or Tendrych
>> and that modern California pagan folklorists are combining Welsh words
>> willy nilly in ways
>> that the Welsh, themselves, would never do and might, in fact, laugh
>> raucously about. ;->
>>
>> Felicia
>> a skeptic who grew up in California which is known as the Land of
>> Fruits, Nuts & Flakes
>> whose emails to the Listserve are no longer bouncing
>> Thank you, Amy!
>>
>>
>> On Nov 12, 2007, at 4:44 PM, Ty Falk wrote:
>>
>>> This might be a stupid question coming from someone who knows next to
>>> nothing on the topic, but how much of the linguistic evolution was
>>> purely oral? For example, new words are "officially" added to the
>>> English language all the time, often because of cultural usage. Would
>>> it be possible that this combination was such a product, passed willy
>>> nilly through oral tradition of some for or another with no central
>>> authority to "legitimize" it's use?
>>
>
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